..often tells a story about the owner. Seems the tool boxes you see at garage sales and flea markets can often contain just junk. Other times it seems they tell a story about a machinist, or auto mechanic, or carpenter or household handyman. Someone else owned that toolbox before, and saw it as a valuable storage item before someone decided it was time to go.
Recently, I saw this SK 2 drawer hand carry tool box and my first response was, just tell me what you want for the box alone. I didn't want the junk inside. Well, it came along for the ride anyway. It seems the former owner (not the seller) was a machinist by trade, evidenced by the Starrett decimal charts, various taps, a handy 6" Lufkin metal pocket ruler, feeler gauges nicely tucked into a oak dovetailed micrometer box and various other telltale items. No grease. Clearly not a mechanics box. No markings of sockets rolling around, no dings from hammers being dumped from above. No larger tools were included, I'm sure those went to another buyer well before me.
Perhaps you too have snagged a tool box with items in it that collectively told a story, just as this old box did.
Up here I find them from die makers, there were lots of them working for the jewelry industry before we shipped it to china. There are often various weird jigs and things that I will never figure out the original use for...
I have a lifetime supply of jewelers saw blades from under the felt in the drawers...
Once in a while I find a stray photograph....
The most interesting story piece tho, was a engineers log book from a fellow who worked for several of the local textile mills. drawings of loom parts he was replacing, comparisons of different venders supplies for the mill, proposals to generate electricity at the mill verses buying it from the new local electric utility. tables of when to check the fire extinguishers....how many times the light bulbs had to be replaced....
Amazing how many different things the poor fellow had to do..
Sounds like a bunch of the things I do, and I am only the night dispatcher.
When I find deals like this I'm torn between feeling sad that such a tradesman sold his great old tools, and really glad those tools wound up in the hands of an appreciative man.
It's sad that there wasn't anybody in the family who wanted to keep such things. I watched a pickup full of boxes being unloaded at the recycle area of the dump a few weeks ago. There was a lot of junk to be sure, but the fellow was just exasperated at all the boxes marked "shop" he was unloading. "Who would believe there was so much shop junk?!" he said.
Obviously the end product of an estate sale.
One of my favorite tool box adventures happened when I was installing a Bomar hinge on a door for a friend. I had no intention of charging him for the work. He kept asking from time to time. After I got the door installed, he wanted to show me around the house, which he had just bought. We went to the basement, full of stuff left behind, including an old carpenter's tool chest. As we were walking out, he asked again how much I wanted for hanging the door. So, I said I'd take the chest. "It's yours," he said. It turned out to be full of tools. A lot of wrenches of various sorts, and, happily for me, five Stanley planes! , including a #40 1/2. Tacked onto the lid on the inside was an old business card that had the old owner's name and a 4 digit phone number, and "First Class Carpenter."
I guess things had changed for him, because most of the tools weren't carpenter's tools, and he had covered the top of the lid with galvanized sheet metal.
It's in storage now but I hope to get it out soon -- I'm looking forward to getting a shop built at my house. Then I can go through the wrenches with all I've learned here about these tools. There could be jewels in that chest.